Peter Doig

Peter Doig at the Musee d’Art Moderne. The exhibition is composed of nearly eighty paintings + drawings, spanning the late 1980s-2008, basically the beginning of his career until present day. Recently the Musee d’Art Moderne has been surprising with some interesting shows but I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I went on Sunday to see the exhibition. I liked the few Doig paintings I had seen prior, but you never know when they are all lumped together. In fact, the exhibition is intriguing and engaging and well worth a visit.

The work is installed more-or-less chronologically because for Doing, his work very much represents place-more to the point-the place where he is currently residing. Born in Scotland, raised in Canada, grad school in London and since 2002 living in Trinidad. He is very much taken with man’s relationship to nature. Representations of solitary man in the landscape make frequent appearances whether they stand by a lake, sit in a canoe, or poke through the forest. I don’t know his technique (although most paintings are oil on canvas), but the paintings have a blurred, layered quality—like he is doing a type of rubbing or transfer. It gives the paintings, especially the very isolated, almost haunting images, heightend effect. Though I think it is super cool he moved to Trinidad, for whatever reasons he did, I have to say that I think his later works, those that have been made on the island, go a bit to far in their Gauguin-esque aesthetic, from imagery to color scheme.

Peter Doig, 30 May-September 7, 2008. www.mam.paris.fr